Hi - I’m Michelle from Mystic Water Soap and am happy to be here on the DFS forum. I've been selling my soap and other body care products at farmer’s markets and festivals since 2007, but I’ve made soap for my family and friends for over twenty years. I was an expat for large part of my life, traveling a lot in my 20's, then living in the Middle East for a couple of years and finally moving to Italy. I learned how to make soap when I lived there, and my hobby became my livelihood when I returned home. My tallow shaving soap has been sold online since 2012 at www.mystic4men.com. I make a lot of things besides shaving soap: bath soaps, shampoo bars, massage and perfume oils, shea butter, lip balms, powders, ointments and hair oils (among other stuff) which you can find at www.mysticwatersoap.com.

I’m revising my current shaving soap formula to include some natural chelating ingredients to make it easier to use in hard water conditions. If some of you would like to help me, I’d appreciate it greatly. I’m looking for about 15 testers: I’m hoping to get people from across the country (U.S. only please) to see how it works with different water conditions. Experience with my products is not necessary, but people who have previously had problems are especially welcome! And if you find lathering my soap to be a piece of cake, I need you to see if this changes anything. But please only sign up if you are willing to try them all and give me feedback. If you contact me by pm, I'll need your mailing address, name and regular email addy.

I’ll send you five samples of unscented soap to try. One will be marked as the control (my regular lanolin recipe with no cheating ingredients added). The other four samples will be marked only A,B,C and D, to avoid any ingredient bias. I’m testing three ingredients, separately and in combination: sodium citrate, sodium lactate and sodium gluconate. The basic formula contains tallow, glycerin, stearic acid, shea butter, palm oil, castor oil, avocado oil, lanolin, bentonite clay, silk protein, allantoin, and aloe vera. There’s no coconut oil in my shaving soap. I mention this in case anyone has allergies to any of these ingredients.

So the test will be to see which, if any, of the soaps prove easier to lather in your water than the others. Preliminary tests indicate that you should definitely see a difference between the new soaps and the control, but I want to know if one combination or another is markedly better than the other three. Improving the product is what this is all about, and I’m excited to be close to a good change. Thank you!

Welcome Michelle! I think your soaps are wonderful as is, but there's always room for improvement I guess. I have no experience lathering them with hard water, so I'm not familiar with the difficulties people are having in that area. Hopefully your new formula(s) will remedy that as I think every wet shaver should have some Mystic Water in their den. Good luck with the testing!

Welcome Michelle! You are an artisan that I have a great deal of respect for, not only because of your quality products, but because of your willingness to listen to criticism. Because of this trait, I have full confidence in your brand since I have no doubt that it will continue to improve over time. In my opinion certain aspects of Mystic Water soap (particularly the phenomenal post shave feel) are already among the best on the market. If anyone is interested, I reviewed Mystic Water here.

I'd volunteer to test the new version, but the hard water conditions that led me to comment on the lathering difficulties no longer exist. It would be most helpful if users that currently have hard water would volunteer to test the soap with added chelating agents. When the new version is ready for release, I'll be picking up a couple of pucks.

(04-21-2016, 10:47 PM)NeoXerxes Wrote: Welcome Michelle! You are an artisan that I have a great deal of respect for, not only because of your quality products, but because of your willingness to listen to criticism. Because of this trait, I have full confidence in your brand since I have no doubt that it will continue to improve over time. In my opinion certain aspects of Mystic Water soap (particularly the phenomenal post shave feel) are already among the best on the market. If anyone is interested, I reviewed Mystic Water here.

I'd volunteer to test the new version, but the hard water conditions that led me to comment on the lathering difficulties no longer exist. It would be most helpful if users that currently have hard water would volunteer to test the soap with added chelating agents. When the new version is ready for release, I'll be picking up a couple of pucks.

I believe it should be tested in hard and soft water. I have a water softener but I would just turn it off for testing with hard water, and turn it back on to test with soft. Also, I have found the soap to be somewhat finicky even in my soft water. I can always dial it in though, just have to be careful adding the water. Other than that it's an excellent soap.